THE AMERICAN
INDIAN CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT
A CASE STUDY IN CIVIL SOCIETY PROTEST
CHANGING AMERICAN INDIAN POLICY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Open warfare, followed by treaty-making, beginning in 1778
Forced removal of Eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River, the
Indian Removal Act of 1830 (the “Trail of Tears”, beginning in 1831)
Confinement to reservations
Economic and cultural assimilation including acculturation at boarding
schools and the end of government trust of communal tribal land
(individual allotment of land ownership, the Dawes Severalty Act of
1887)
The “Indian New Deal” through the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934
The end of the Federal guardianship of tribal nations through
“termination”, 1953
Urbanization of the Indian population through the Voluntary Relocation
Program, 1952
6000
5000
2300
4000
1600
3000
2000
1000
0
1534
248
237
266
244
332
334
342
546
761
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
2000
1990
2400
2000
2900
2010
American Indian Population
(in thousands)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau statistics in First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History by Colin G.
Calloway, Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012
AMERICAN INDIAN URBAN POPULATION
(as a percentage of the total Indian population)
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
990
2000
2010
UPHEAVAL IN AMERICA

The 1960s and 1970s mark a new era of Indian
militancy and “Red Power”
•
New organisations (National Indian Youth Council, American Indian
Movement, Women of All Red Nations)
•
New leadership (Clyde Warrior, Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Vernon
Bellecourt, Ada Deer, Wilma Mankiller)
•
New tactics (“Fish-ins”, occupations, blockades)
Lumbee Indian war veterans celebrate their dispersal of a Ku
Klux Klan rally in North Carolina, 1958
Tuscarora Indians resist the seizure of tribal land for the
construction of a dam in New York State, 1958
Nisqually River “Fish-in”, Washington State, mid 1960s
Indian militants occupy the former US prison on Alcatraz
Island, San Francisco Bay, November 1969- June 1971
Alcatraz Island Occupation
Benjamin Bratt (Quechua), American actor, Alcatraz occupier
Indian activists come to Washington, DC on their “Trail of
Broken Treaties”, autumn, 1972 and occupy the Bureau of
Indian Affairs building that November
Indian militants confront US Federal authorities, Wounded
Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, 1973
American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders, Russell Banks
(Ogallala Lakota)and Dennis Means(Anishinaabe), Wounded
Knee, 1973
Ada Deer (Menominee), first Native American woman to
head the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee), first elected female tribal chief,
1987
Seminole Indians celebrate tribal purchase of Hard Rock
International, for $965 million, Times Square, New York City,
2006
FURTHER POSSIBILITIES:

Relevant Court Cases:
•
Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832
•
Ex Parte Crow Dog, 1887
•
Lone Wolf vs. Hitchcock, 1903
•
Oliphant vs. Suquamish, 1978
•
United States vs. Lara, 2004
TWENTIETH CENTURY INDIAN TESTIMONY:
•
“We are Not Free”- Clyde Warrior’s testimony before the President’s
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, 1967
•
“Proclamation to the Great White Father and All His People”statement of the Alcatraz occupants calling themselves the “Indians
of All Tribes”, 1969
•
Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, the autobiography of the late
Wilma Mankiller, with Michael Wallis, 1993
COLLECTIONS OF SOURCE MATERIAL


First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American
Indian History by Colin G. Calloway, Boston and New
York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012
Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of IndianWhite Relations from Prophesy to the Present, 14921992 edited by Peter Nabokov, New York: Viking,
1991